Twitter 86%
Blogs   79%
LinkedIn  78%
Facebook  77%
YouTube or other video  41%
Social bookmarking sites (i.e. Del.icio.us)  38%
Forums   38%
StumbleUpon 28%
Digg, Reddit, Mixx  26%
FriendFeed 18%

By a long shot, Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook are the top four social media tools used by marketers, with Twitter leading the pack.  All the other social media tools paled in comparison to these top four… which really is unfortunate due to the SEO friendliness/stickiness of both Flickr and YouTube.  (more on this soon!)

Owners of small businesses were more likely to use LinkedIn than employees working for a corporation.  Another intesting finding is that men are significantly more likely to use YouTube or other video marketing than women (52.4% of all men compared to only 31.7% of women).

The percentages and rankings shift slightly for those just getting started with social media marketing.  In this situation, LinkedIn is ranked as the number two choice behind Twitter with blogging coming in third.  Facebook jumps up to 2nd place for marketers who have been using social for a few months.  In addition, even more of these folks use Twitter.  Twitter is used by 94% of marketers who have been using social media for years, followed in a close second by blogs.

Now, how to find your audience?  This comprehensive list should help.  Remember… it’s not just about finding AN audience, but the RIGHT audience.

• Wordtracker:   Free trial is a great choice for keyword research if you only do it once in a while.
• Keywords Analyzer:   A desktop-based keyword tool, since I conduct keyword research all the time.  It’s always updated in a timely fashion.
• Submit Equalizer:   This submits your site to search engines and directories.
• Web2Submitter:   Submits your site to several social bookmarking and story submission web sites at once; much faster than doing it by hand.
• Camtasia Studio:  To make screen capture videos.
• Tubeinator:   This adds friends to your YouTube account (among other functions), which in turn helps your videos get more views.
• Press Equalizer:   Automatically submits your press release to the hundreds of press release services out there.
• CommentHut:   A BIG FAVORITE!  Allows you to quickly and easily find Squidoo pages, HubPages, and blogs on your topic that allow comments.  You then leave a comment linking back to your site.
• Google Keyword Tool
• Forrester Research’s Groundswell, Techrigy’s SM2 and Radian6